In the News

Recent NIH rankings show that Emory continues its growth in research funding and is 17th in the nation for fiscal year 2006. In 2008 Emory had a total of $411 million in sponsored research funding.

In 2009 Emory's Winship Cancer Institute earned the prestigious National Cancer Institute Cancer Center (NCI) designation. With NCI designation Winship Cancer Institute joins the ranks of the nationa's elite cancer research and treatment facilities, and becomes one of only sixty-five NCI cancer centers in the United States among the thousands of cancer facilities that exist (Press Release).

Emory University was ranked as the 5th Best Place to Work in Academia in the United States by readers of The Scientist (Emory Press Release).

Emory University has been selected as one of America's 25 New Elite 'Ivies" by Newsweek.

Seven research areas in the Graduate Division were ranked in the Top Ten based on Faculty Scholarly Productivity by the Chronicle of Higher Education. These research areas include ecology, evolutionary biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular pharmacology, nutrition sciences and pharmacology. Emory University's faculty in the biological and biomedical sciences is among the most productive in the country based upon the recent Academic Analytics rankings (21st nationally).

The Rollins School of Public Health was ranked as 7th in the nation by U.S. News and World Report (2007).

Emory announced a new Global Health Institute that will help address the most pressing health challenges around the world, particularly in poorer nations. The initial budget is $110 million (Emory Press Release).

Gilead Sciences and Royalty Pharma have announced an agreement with Emory University to purchase the royalty interests for Emtricitabine, a leading anti-HIV/AIDS compound. The companies will make a one-time cash payment of $525 million to Emory University. Dr. Dennis Liotta, one of the three researchers credited with discovering Emtricitabine, is a Division faculty member in the Molecular and Systems Pharmacology Program. This is believed to be the largest single sale of intellectual property in the history of American higher education (Emory Press Release).

Emory has announced the establishment of the new Emory Institute for Drug Discovery (EIDD). Dr. Dennis Liotta is the Director of the EIDD (Press Release). The Emory Vaccine Center has also formed an alliance with the Australian Centre for Vaccine Development at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, with the plan to establish an internationally recognized vaccine research program and develop new vaccines for human infectious diseases and cancers (Press Release).

The Faculty of 1000 Biology (F1000) has named a paper by Dr. Rafi Ahmed as one of the "All-Time Top 10" most interesting scientific papers. The article was published in the February 9, 2006 issue of Nature and was entitled, "Restoring Function in Exhausted DC8T Cells During Chronic Viral Infection". The paper was ranked #5 and also placed #1 in the F1000 "All-Time Top 10 in Immunology" category.

Dr. Mahlon DeLong and Emory University President Jim Wagner have been elected as fellows of the The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies (Press Release). Dr. DeLong has also received the 2008 Movement Disorders Society Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 American Academy of Neurology Movement Disorders Research Award. He is recognized by American Health as one of the Top Doctors in Neurology for the treatment of movement disorders.

Dr. Rafi Ahmed was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, as one of 72 new members chosen in 2009 (Press Release).

Dr. Xiaoping Hu has been elevated to the top honor of Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was also named a Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (Emory Press Release).

Dr. David Wright is the lead investigator on a national study to evaluate the effectiveness of progesterone on patients with acute traumatic brain injuries. The study could potentially draw $28.5 million in federal funding (Article).

Dr. Kerry Ressler has been named one of 15 new Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigators. He is the first practicing psychiatrist to be appointed an HHMI Investigator. HHMI considers recipients to be the nation's top physician-scientists who will ensure that basic research discoveries are translated into improved treatments for patients. Dr. Ressler is also the recipient of the 2006 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research.

Dr. Richard Cummings and David F. Smith have been awarded a grant of $1.2 million from the NIH EUREKA program (for Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration). EUREKA grants were only awarded to a group of 38 scientists in the United States. The grants are given to researchers with exceptionally innovative projects that could have "an extraordinarily significant impact" on many areas in science. (Emory Press Release)

The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT awarded the 2008 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience to Dr. Michael Davis. The Scolnick Prize is awarded annually to recognize an individual who has made outstanding advances in the field of neuroscience.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) awarded Emory a $2.5 million, three-year grant. The principal investigator is Dr. Christian Larsen (Emory Press Release). In 2002 the JDRF awarded Emory scientists $4.1 million to creat the Emory JDRF Center for Islet Transplantation. One of only a handful of such centers, it was renewed with an additional five-year grant of $8.5 million in 2006.

The NIH awarded Emory $3.6 million for Schizophrenia Gene Research. The project is led by Dr. Stephen Warren (Emory Press Release).

Emory is one of only six national influenza centers funded by the NIH. Dr. Richard Compans is the executive director of the Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. The NIH awarded Emory a $32.8 million contract over seven years (Emory Press Release).

The National Institute of Aging awarded researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center with more than $10 million over a five-year period to identify ways to diagnose aging-related diseases earlier in order to increase the chances for effective treatment (Emory Press Release).

Dr. Eric Hunter was named by Science (July 25, 2008) as one of the top 10 NIH-funded researchers who received the most in investigator-initiatied grants for the 2007 fiscal year. He was 9th in total funding and 2nd in citations per paper.

A coalition of leading Alzheimer's disease organizations has awarded a "Tomorrow's Leaders in Alzheimer's Disease Reseach" award to Dr. James Lah. The prize recognizes promising investigators who have made pivotal contributions to early detection, treatment, and prevention of the disease (http://www.whsc.emory.edu/press_releases2.cfm?announcement_id_seq=15144).

Dr. Barbara Bowman was awarded the 2008 Jeffrey P. Koplan Award. The award is the NCCDPHP Division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's highest form of recognition.

Dr. Christian Larsen was awarded the 2007 Thomas E. Starzl Prize in Surgery and Immunology (Emory Press Release).

Dr. Kenneth Bernstein received the 2005 Novartis Award from the American Heart Association and Dr. David Harrison received the 2004 Novartis Award.  It is an extraordinary accomplishment for Emory faculty to have received this award for two years in a row, and it is an honor that has never been duplicated by any other academic center.

Dr. Peng Jin has been awarded the Beckman Young Investigator Award for 2005 (Emory Press Release).

Dr. George Armelagos won the Viking Fund Medal in 2005. Past winners have included Margaret Mead and Louis Leakey.

Dr. David Lynn was selected as one of 20 inaugural HHMI Professors who received $1 million to bring scientific research into undergraduate classrooms. The topic of his research is "On Recent Discoveries by Emory Researchers (ORDER)". According to the Chronicle of Higher Education the grants are believed to be the largest of their kind.

Dr. Donna Maney was one of three scientists who were awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The White House released a group photo of the 20 awardees - Dr. Maney is two rows behind the President, one person to the left of center (Emory Press Release).

Dr. Donald Stein has been appointed to the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.  This is a 4 year appointment made by the U.S. Secretary of Health and approved by the Director of the NIH.

Dr. Donald Stein has been selected as the President of the International Brain Injury Association for a 4 year term of office.

Dr. Howard Frumkin has been named Director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC.

Additional health related news about Emory and the faculty can be found on the Woodruff Health Sciences Center In the News section.

Innovative Research

Dr. Michelle LaPlaca has developed a device that will detect concussions, called DETECT (Emory Press Release).

Dr. Todd Preuss was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for their program, “ChimpanA to ChimpanZee”.